Seven hundred years ago, in a castle not twenty miles from Canterbury, there lived a very vain and beautiful lady. She was the wife of the lord of the manor and was known from Oxford to Jerusalem— wherever there were knights to joust for her and minstrels to sing of her—as the Fair Châtelaine. And there was also, tucked away in a little cell under the castle leads, a very holy old priest called Dan Bartholomew, who said Mass for the inmates of the castle and did his best to look after their souls.

This was no light task. For though the lord of the castle was a pious enough man when he was at home (which was not often), and the poor peasants round about found time between dawn and dusk to say a few prayers and light a few candles in the forlorn little chapel by the gate-house, the lady kept as far as she could from prayer and altogether from penance. Yet certainly few people needed penance more than that worldly dame. Never a year went by but she spent a knight’s ransom in clothes ; and the older she got and the more her beauty waned, the more new-fangled and costly became her attire.

Of course in her husband’s absence it was Dan Bartholomew’s business to check her ; but she was like the crab which when asked why it walked sideways said, “So I learnt from my parents,” and gave him nothing but saucy answers in return for his serious admonitions. When her husband came back from the Crusade it was even worse.